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Best Practices for State Assessment Systems: Improving Assessment while Revisiting Standards
For this project, an ad hoc committee will plan and conduct two public workshops that will feature invited presentations and discussions directed at research-based guidance for state assessment in the context of the recent moves toward revising state education standards – a move that could result in standards that would be “fewer,” “clearer,” “higher” or “globally benchmarked.” The topics comprising the workshop series would cover current best practices related to assessment systems and explore the opportunities offered by new approaches to assessment within the context of the current policy interest in the possibility of revising standards. The agendas for the workshop series would be developed to build on the work of previous NRC consensus studies on assessment, extending the lessons from that previous work to address assessment in an education system where standards are revised in ways that are currently the focus of national policy attention.
- How do the different existing tests that have been or could be used to make comparisons across states—such as NAEP, AP, SAT, ACT, and PISA—compare to each other and to the existing state tests with their associated content and performance standards? What implications do the similarities and differences across these tests have for the state comparisons that they can be used to make?
- How could current procedures for developing content and performance standards be changed to allow benchmarking to measures and predictions of college and career readiness and also promote the development of a small set of clear standards? What options are there for constructing tests that measure readiness with respect to academic skills? Are there options for assessing “21st century” or “soft” skills that could provide a more robust assessment of readiness than a focus on academic skills alone?
- What does research suggest about best practices in running a state assessment system and using the assessment results from that system to improve instruction? How does this compare to current state capacity and practices? How might assessment in the context of revised standards be designed to move state practices to more closely resemble best practices?
- How could assessments that are constructed for revised standards be used for accountability? Are there important differences in the use of assessments for accountability if those assessments are based on standards that are 1) shared in common across states, 2) designed to be fewer and clearer, or 3) focused on higher levels of performance?
The first workshop will address issues related to the content of tests, which could be affected by changes in state standards. The second workshop will focus on questions related to the use of test results for improving teaching and learning, both directly by providing information to the classroom teacher and indirectly by providing key input to accountability systems.
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Date
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Event
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Location
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Meeting Materials
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July 29, 2009
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Committee Planning Meeting
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Washington, DC
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December 10-11, 2009
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Workshop 1
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Washington, DC
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DRAFT AGENDA
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MEMBERSHIP:
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Diana C. Pullin (Chair), Boston College, MA
Joan Herman, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, Los Angeles, CA
Scott Marion, National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, Dover, NH
Dirk Mattson, Minnesota Department of Education, Roseville
Rebecca A. Maynard, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Mark Wilson, University of California, Berkeley
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